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Ethertronics enters DAS market with EtherDAS Indoor

Ethertronics is entering the distributed antenna systems business with EtherDAS Indoor, a line of products designed for deployments in areas such as offices, arenas, airports and convention centers.

Ethertronics, which has made its name by designing and manufacturing embedded antennas for a wide range of wireless devices, is promising that its new product line will be "the world's first DAS solution to achieve passive intermodulation (PIM) performance of -153dBc in all 2G, 3G and 4G bands," including frequencies between 700 MHz and 2.7 GHz.

Jeff Shamblin, chief scientist at Ethertronics, told FierceBroadbandWireless that current in-building DAS "don't have good PIM values." He said EtherDAS Indoor is "the first DAS product that will meet the low PIM requirements that operators demand."

DAS are deployed to extend a macrocellular network's reach via a collection of small antennas spread over a specific geographic area and connected by fiber back to a central location or power source, usually a base station. Low PIM values result in minimized interference and better network capacity, enabling higher data, video and voice performance on both the uplink and downlink.

"Mobile operators see indoor DAS as a powerful way to improve coverage and capacity while reducing their macro base station capex and opex, but they've been discouraged by DAS products that have limited performance, spectrum support or both," said Steven Marcher, COO at Ethertronics.

EtherDAS Indoor will be commercially available next month. Shamblin said the product line is currently being certified by a U.S. mobile operator that he declined to name. Upon receiving operator certifications, EtherDAS Indoor will be marketed to systems integrators and other value-added resellers.

The EtherDAS line initially includes two omni-directional products, one with a 525 mm pigtail connector and one with an N connector. Ethertronics also intends to eventually offer a weatherized DAS product line for outdoor deployments, Shamblin said.